Oil prices rise on OPEC and Russia’s deal to cut production (en/fr)

According to Reuters, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said Wednesday that it would cut production by 1.2 million barrels a day from 33.6 million barrels and said it expects producers from outside the group, including Russia, to join with additional cuts totaling 600,000 barrels a day. On Thursday, 12/1, Azerbaijan said it was also willing to engage in talks on cuts while Indonesia suspended its membership. 

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Series of earthquakes in the US likely triggered by the shale oil & gas industry activity

by  Sid Perkins for Science MagScience Mag

During the past decade or so the oil and gas industry has injected wastewater into deep rocks in eastern Texas, causing Earth’s surface to bulge ever so slightly—and likely triggering a series of tremors there in 2012, a new study suggests. Scientists say the work offers hope that similar analyses of the landscape in other oil- and gas-producing regions could help identify areas at risk of human-caused earthquakes.

The 2012 quakes shook the small town of Timpson, Texas, which lies northeast of Houston near the Louisiana state line. The largest, a 4.8-magnitude quake, and three more magnitude-4 or higher that followed, all originated in a suspicious spot: directly beneath two wells where wastewater generated during oil and gas production in the region is pumped into porous sandstone layers about 1.8 kilometers underground.

Oil and gas producers dispose of their wastewater deep underground for a variety of reasons; sometimes pumping fluid into the reservoir helps boost production, and in other cases it’s a convenient method of getting polluted water out of retention ponds on the surface so that it doesn’t inadvertently spill to pollute rivers, streams, or other sources of drinking water.